


Charm

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: AAverse, Hurt/Comfort, Impromptu Communication, Lugonis' POV, Mild Gore, Oneshot, Other, Sort of? - Freeform, after-sex cuddling, basically they fucked offscreen and now they get to talk about their issues, because characters communicating like decent people is what i live for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22461136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: You can do a lot of things. You can seduce two thirds of the Underworld. You're still not going to be able to have a good relationship with your surplice if you don't kiss them goodnight.
Relationships: Pisces Lugonis/Pisces Surplice
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Charm

**Author's Note:**

> I know the summary is stupid but if you're here you probably already know the ship SO. This is how they actually got together lmao. Lugonis is 24 here, he's just Babey. Zaphiri Incident hasn't happened yet. I know I said "oh I'll do 15min word sprints" and then I finished a nightmarish Netacad assignment and then wrote for an hour instead. I just don't care.

Some things, honestly, you don’t need to actually have words for. Some things you don’t need to describe. He’d been nine, once, tumbling into a hole with his younger twin at his heels, and he’d been thirteen, once, following that same brother in reverse now, deeper into the Meikai where he knew he’d never really surface from. Sanctuary said all they wanted to, but he wasn’t entirely sure they knew what was really down there. At the end of everything, all of it was built on lies.

Seigneur Pisces had been waiting for him the day he turned sixteen, offering him a nod and a pretty voice and absolutely no way of knowing their mood. Surplices didn’t exactly have body language, and while most of them had grown into it, Pisces hadn’t, remaining stone-still and a sort of musical monotone to their voice, indicating nothing. He hadn’t learned to read them, and they spent so much time apart that he’d never gotten the impression they’d wanted anything to be different. Most Spectres were deeply attuned and somewhat intimate to the emotions of their surplices, and he couldn’t have said the same for himself. Maybe that was just the luck of balancing a cloth and a surplice at once.

He blinked and wiped away at the blood on his face, trying to ignore how much the perspiration on his forearm stung the rugburn wounds, irritating them even more. It wasn’t like it was the worst injury he’d ever had. Once enough had been cleared away to see, he looked up towards the balcony, where he could see them, their forearms resting on the railing and their silver-white cape gently fluttering in the cool night breeze.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked, just loud enough for them to hear. “Because I get the feeling that you’re pretty mad at me.” 

They didn’t turn, but he heard a short, brutal and clipped laugh all the same. Pisces didn’t strike him as the type to laugh like that, and yet... “You finally noticed? That only took you seven years.”

He swallowed back an annoyed huff. He couldn’t really be blamed for whatever they were mad about, could he? And they _had_ been acting strange all night- the blood of serious rugburn across his face proved that. Forcing his strength to obey him, he pushed his legs off of the bed and onto the floor, ignoring the sharp bolts of pain crawling up his thighs and back. He forced himself to stand up, one hand on the nightstand for support, until he was sure he could walk over to them. His step wasn’t steady, and he kept a hand on the wall in hopes that his legs wouldn’t give out on him, and staggered over.

“I think we need to talk,” he said, finally, when he made it to their side. They didn’t move at all, refusing to acknowledge him, and if they breathed, it was impossible to tell. “Because I have no idea why you’re angry with me, and you’ve been acting weird all night, and I want to know what this is about.”

Pisces tilted their head very slightly, inclining towards him, like they were sizing him up out of the corner of eyes they didn’t have. “Do you mean to tell me you actually have not noticed?”

He bit back a shaky laugh, electing to just try to keep breathing through the dull agony that started somewhere at the top of his spine and worsened as it dragged farther down hi body. “This is where I get to say that no, I haven’t. You haven’t said a word about being angry with me. We barely spend time together as it is. I won’t say tonight hasn’t been fun, but I haven’t the faintest idea where this came from.”

Pisces turned their head back away from him, and for just a moment, their cosmos flickered, in what was unmistakeably fury. They hid it well, but he was also pretty good at judging the cosmos of his fellow gold saints without ever actually leaving his temple. It was a good way to tell whether he needed to get up and handle the issue or simply roll over and go back to sleep. He didn’t get enough sleep as it was.

“Is that all I am to you? A night of pleasure and nothing more?” they asked, in that same monotone he was used to.

He tilted his head, trying to lean around to see their face, or the empty airspace of their helmet that constituted their face, he supposed. “We’ve never done this before tonight, and you haven’t exactly shown you’ve been interested in having very much to do with me in the first place.”

“You can be very ignorant, when you wish to be,” they remarked, blunt and dry. “Should I be insulted?”

The comment caught him a little off-guard. Last he checked, he was actually pretty good at reading those around him. “What?” was his answer, blinking. “Pisces, we barely talk at all. I get that I’ve probably pissed you off, but you’ve never shown anything like that.”

“I suppose the part where I have been has escaped your notice entirely?” Their cosmos flickered again, very slightly, dry anger and something bitter. Now that he was focusing on it, suddenly, he could see it: stars all throughout them, woven into a nebulous shape of a person through the metal of their body and the airspace where their Spectre would go. Stars that sparkled with anger and resignation, and if he wasn’t mistaken, envy. They were _furious_ , and yet, somehow he’d missed it entirely until he was standing beside them trying to get them to talk.

“ _Is this how they do it…? Is this how they get you down on your knees…?_ ” whispered their voice, melodic and soft, the memory of just a few hours prior coupled with their illusion - one he’d never seen before, and had not recognized as them before they removed it - and Lugonis guessed that they’d been thinking this way - whichever way it was - for a while.

“Pisces,” he said, slowly, and he leaned slightly towards them, brushing his shoulder against the tip of theirs. “What I’m getting from you, right now, is… a lot of anger. A whole lot more than there was about an hour ago.”

“And?”

He bit back a sigh and reached up with one hand, wiping fresh blood away from his face, ignoring the sting of salt on an open wound. “No, I didn’t notice this before. I think I’m only seeing it now because this is the physically closest we’ve been in years. If you’ve been dropping hints, no, I haven’t seen them. It’s not like I’ve got facial expressions or body language to go on, here. All I can really tell is what you’re saying and how you’re saying it, and no, we don’t talk very much at all. If there’s something you want me to know, you need to actually tell me.”

One of their hands - gloves, he supposed - rubbed the ghosts of fingertips together, like Madeleine did when she was debating smacking him. He wondered, for a moment, if they did it for the same reasons. “You do not want to be near me,” they stated, calmly, as if it were fact. Their cosmos flared ever so slightly with sorrow, betraying what they actually felt about the idea. Ignoring the pain, he lifted an arm and slipped it around the back of their collar, draping it overtop of their shoulders.

“Funny, I always got the feeling you were the one who didn’t want to be close,” he said, forcing his voice to be as gentle as he could. Yes, there was severe rugburn wounds on his face and every part of his body was in a dull agony from how sore he was, but maybe he’d entirely misinterpreted the situation. “I have nothing against being closer. To be honest, I’d like to get to know you better. You’re a complete mystery to me, Pisces, and I think that should change, because I’m learning right now there’s more to you than I realized. I just never thought you actually wanted it.”

He fully expected them to step away, to cast a rude remark in his direction, or make it clear his impression had been entirely correct. What he didn’t expect was for them to lean toward him, into his torso, angling their shoulder to not drive a pointy bit directly into him. For a surplice almost entirely made of pointy bits, he took it as a gesture of apology for how much his face was bleeding.

“You do not seem to need my assistance, nor do you seem to want my company,” they said, their voice low and almost wondering. He didn’t even bother to hold back the sigh this time, but his hands drifted to their hips all the same, slipping around them, and stepping backward, guiding them back into the room. He stumbled most of the way and found himself a little lightheaded and glad when his calves hit the edges of the bed as he all but fell back into it, pulling them with him.

Their cosmos flared with surprise and confusion. He pushed himself back up until his head met the pillows - or what was left of them, really - and he pulled them up with him, until they were cradled in his arms, legs tangled into each other, foreheads inches apart. “If you’re willing to give it, I’m always happy to have you by my side,” he breathed. They were the one who shifted closer, bumping their forehead to his, their cosmos reaching out towards his own and locking together, like burying their face in his neck, like holding onto him with all they were. He smiled and pulled them closer. They didn’t resist.

“Pisces, Pisces…” he murmured, pressing a kiss to their forehead, finding the metal warm under his touch. “Let’s spend some time together, just you and I. I want to get to know you better, and I want to fix whatever I did to make you angry with me. I think if we do that, I might be able to learn to read you better, too…”

Something soft brushed against his collarbone, like cosmos, like a gentle kiss to the closest part of his body to their lips. “Just the two of us?” they asked.

“Just the two of us,” he confirmed. He did have some duties he needed to complete - like finishing the mission he was on, for one, though he was pretty sure Ilias would cover him for it once the situation was explained. They’d saved each other far too much for Ilias to be insulted if he ditched a mission halfway through for Pisces’ sake. What wasn’t that he was sure he could push off for a few days. He wasn’t as busy as he’d been last month, which was nice. He glanced down, ever so slightly, trying to see them a bit better. The front of their abdomen, the sort of metal ‘skirt’ they had around their hips, was splattered with drying blood and something else, and their legs were tangled with his, but their face was hidden, and he didn’t have the faintest idea what they were thinking. “What’s on your mind, Pisces? I want to listen.”

It was a moment before they answered. “I… do not think I have ever been in this sort of situation before,” they answered, slowly. “I do not believe I like the way I am feeling right now… I am not usually a surplice of contradictions.”

“D’you want to talk about it?” He shifted his arm to rest more over their ribs, reaching down slightly to tug the discarded blanket over them both. 

“When… when I awaken, it is never… Never to anything like this, I suppose? It is almost always over a mortal Saint whose heart is broken and whose mind is even more so. It is all I can do to make their passing easier. I cannot prevent it, nor even slow it down. All I am is the reassuring words that they cling to before they go out and be… heroic. It is a novelty, to have a bearer who is stable and not blind to the world because of his agony. I want to say it is better, because I have a bearer who is not in pain, and yet… You do not need me around, and there are no words that I have that might change that.” They spoke with an air of confusion, of talking mostly to work out what they were feeling, like they had never actually put it into words before. “You are so much happier with others. You do not _need_ me in any way I recognize. I… do not know how to feel about that, and in my anger, it appears I lashed out far more severely than I expected to.”

It brought to mind what they might’ve actually been planning when they had shown up to a ball that he had been incognito at, seduced him, and then spent several hours putting him so thoroughly into a mattress that his face was still bleeding from rubbing against the fabric so hard. Perhaps they really had gotten carried away by accident. He’d never known them to be the type capable of it, and he wasn’t going to say he didn’t enjoy the experience, because he had, but at the end, they were still a surplice, and much stronger than he could ever be capable of being. But it made sense, in its own cruel sort of way. The residents of the Cathedral stayed there unless they were called by a Gold Saint whose loyalty was fading, or who doubted their place. Saints who went over usually ended in tragedy. He didn’t consider himself one of them, not really, he’d always had one foot in both worlds since before he’d really started his training.

“Tonight was pretty fun, I’ll admit, though I’m not too hot on the facial wounds. But… Just because I’m not planning my career to be ‘die tragically and heroically begging for a goddess to take me back’ doesn’t mean we can’t have any sort of relationship at all. We’re just two people who get to be linked together by cosmos, and we’re certainly not going to find out what that means as a new experience for the both of us if we avoid each other.” He reached up with his free hand almost automatically, moving to brush his thumb over where their face would be. Surprisingly, it was almost solid underneath his touch, and he rubbed their cheek gently, finding heat rise to his cheeks a little more when they tilted their head ever so slightly into it. The anger in their cosmos was fading, replacing itself with relief and wonder. 

“You have no idea,” they murmured. “No idea at all… You have spent the past seven years flirting with everyone around you, driving me up a wall with your every antic, and no matter how much I watch or who you happen to be with… I do not believe I would care who I had to drown, innocent or small or what-have-you, if I would be the one you were kissing, just once.” The feeling crept into him that they were avoiding his gaze, even though they didn’t actually have eyes. 

Later, he would be sure to note that it was right about at this point that he gazed down the length of their body, noting the faint shimmer of polish, the sparkle of active cosmos, the shine of moonlight against them, bathing them in a silver, almost ethereal glow. They’d never been this close to him, and he wondered vaguely how he’d missed how beautiful they were. The curve of their hips and the gentle engravings of symbolic fish on their plates, the lighter violet trim, the sharp points of every plate, the places where they were held together by rivets and spot-welds and joints, and where they were held together by nothing but stars.

He smiled, eyeing them, fluttering his eyelashes just a little. “Well, I don’t think anyone has to drown if only you’ll ask,” he answered, dropping his voice to a cadence he used mostly when trying to flirt with someone. They tilted their head up finally, to look him in the eye.

“This is me asking.”

“I don’t hear a question,” he teased, ever so softly. Their cosmos flickered with amusement, and they shifted closer.

“If you do not start kissing me this very second, I will start trying to drown innocent humans, so if you please?”

“Gladly,” he answered, letting the laugh bubble out of him, and he pulled them close, catching the airspace of almost-solid lips against his own. Their gloves found their way to his hair, undone and loose, and ah, when it deepened he wasn’t entirely sure if he’d ever kissed someone like this, or if he ever would again, and for the moment, he didn’t care.


End file.
